Deadly Attack Near U
Deadly Attack Near U.K. Parliament; Car Plows Victims on Westminster Bridge
Shots were heard near Britain’s Parliament on Wednesday, and an officer was stabbed. Pedestrians were also hit by a vehicle on the nearby Westminster Bridge.
By MEGAN SPECIA on Publish Date March 22, 2017. Photo by Sergey Ponomarev for The Fresh York Times. Observe in Times Movie »
LONDON — A knife-wielding assailant driving a sport utility vehicle mowed down panicked pedestrians and stabbed a police officer outside Parliament on Wednesday in a deadly onslaught, prompting the hasty evacuation of the prime minister and punctuating the threat of terrorism in Europe.
At least four people, including the assailant, were killed and at least forty others injured in the confusing swirl of violence, which the police said they assumed had been “inspired by international terrorism.” It appeared to be the most serious such onslaught in London since the deadly subway bombings more than a decade ago.
Via a turbulent afternoon, ambulances, emergency vehicles and strenuously armed security officers thronged the area outside Parliament, as one of the busiest sections of London was cordoned off and evacuated.
Prime Minister Theresa May was rushed into a vehicle and spirited back to her office. She held a meeting of the government’s emergency committee and issued a statement on Wednesday night from her ten Downing Street residence denouncing “the sick and depraved terrorist attack on the streets of our Capital this afternoon.”
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Mrs. May also said that “the utter details of exactly what happened are still emerging,” but she confirmed that the attack had been carried out by a lone masculine assailant. As of late Wednesday, his identity had not been released, but Scotland Yard officials said they believed they knew who he was.
The attack unfolded around Two:40 p.m., Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said at a news conference.
Driving a sport utility vehicle, the assailant slammed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge near Parliament, killing two people and injuring many others, before crashing into a railing.
After the crash, the driver left the vehicle and approached Parliament, where he stabbed an unarmed police officer to death and was fatally shot by the police.
The dead officer was identified as Keith Palmer, 48, a member of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Guideline with fifteen years of practice.
“This is the day we have planned for but we hoped would never happen,” Mr. Rowley said. “Sadly, it’s now a reality.”
Graphic
The Trail of Terror Across Westminster Bridge
An aerial view of the Westminster Bridge after a driver plowed through pedestrians and crashed outside the British Parliament.
The attack came on the anniversary of suicide bombings in Brussels that killed thirty two people, along with three bombers.
It confirmed fears among counterterrorism officials that London, which had largely escaped latest terrorist attacks in Europe, would join cities like Paris, Brussels and Berlin as targets of mass violence.
“Terrorism affects us all, and France knows the anguish the British people are bearing today,” President François Hollande of France said at a news conference in Villepinte, near Paris.
Mrs. May, who spoke with Mr. Hollande and President Trump, said in her statement that Parliament would meet as normal on Thursday. She vowed to never permit “the voices of hate and evil to drive us apart.”
Cmdr. B. J. Harrington of the Metropolitan Police said at a brief news conference earlier Wednesday that a “full counterterrorism investigation is underway.” He asked members of the public to report any suspicious activity and to share any pics or movie of the violence.
Commander Harrington said that the acting police commissioner, Craig Mackey, had been at the scene of the attack and was not injured, but was “being treated as a significant witness.”
At least three police officers were among those injured on the bridge. Also among the injured were three 10th-grade boys from a group of visiting students from the Brittany region of France, and a woman who fell or plunged into the Sea Thames.
Mr. Hollande’s government said it had chartered a plane to London with families of the French victims.
Tobias Ellwood, a minister in the Foreign Office, attempted to save the life of the fatally stabbed police officer by providing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The number of injured evidently included five South Korean tourists who were shocked by a crowd fleeing the scene, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday morning. Three dudes suffered fractures, and a woman had surgery for a head injury, the ministry said.
For more than two hours, astonished lawmakers inwards the House of Commons, some of whom had ducked for cover, were told to stay in place as officers searched the premises office by office.
“At the moment, the very clear advice from the police and the director of security in the house is that we should remain under suspension, and that the chamber should remain in lockdown until we’ve received advice that it is safe to go back to normal procedures,” David Lidington, the leader of the House of Commons, or lower house of Parliament, told lawmakers in remarks broadcast live on the Big black cock.
Olly Grender, a member of the House of Lords, said that lawmakers were staying put. “We were in a meeting, I heard shouting through the window,” she said, adding that a colleague came in to tell them that a serious scene had taken place.
Jayne Wilkinson, 59, from Birmingham, was near the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square with her fucking partner, David Turner, 56, when they witnessed people abruptly running from Parliament.
The duo said they had seen a middle-aged man holding a knife. He overlooked warnings from the police, running however the gates into the Parliament compound, she said. “They were shouting to warn him,” Ms. Wilkinson said. Soon after, she and her fucking partner heard three gunshots and witnessed the man on the ground.
On the Scene in London
We gave live updates and responded to your questions in London, where a police officer was stabbed near the House of Parliament.
Three construction workers inwards the grounds of Westminster Palace said they had heard shots fired in rapid succession before they were escorted off the premises. “It was bang-bang-bang,” one said.
Reuben Saunders, an American student at Cambridge University who was visiting Parliament, said he had been leaving the building when he eyed a police officer accosted by an assailant armed with two knives or similar weapons.
“He was at the gate, I heard screaming,” Mr. Saunders said. “I witnessed the man on the ground being repeatedly stabbed, or pummeled.”
Mr. Saunders said two or three other police officers arrived, and “there were two or three gunshots.”
Corinne Desray, a teacher who was outside Parliament with thirty nine teenage students on a three-day school tour from northern France, said they had heard three shots. “My colleague eyed figures lounging on the floor and someone said a policeman has been knived,” she said. “I told the kids to leave quickly, we’re heading back to the bus.”
Footage shows moment shots fired as #Westminster terror attack unfolded #Parliament #ScotlandYard More on Big black cock News
— Michael Gravesande (@OldBlackHack) March 22, two thousand seventeen
Kirsten Hurrell, 70, who possesses a newsstand opposite Big Ben, said she had seen a car swerve across a bicycle lane and into a fence around Parliament. She eyed a figure lounging on the ground and called emergency services. “At very first I thought it was an accident, but then I was told the car had already mowed down fairly a number of people on Westminster Bridge,” she said, adding: “Now that it is a terrorist incident, it is a bit more daunting.”
Robert Vaudry, 52, a fund manager from Stratford-upon-Avon, said he had emerged from the Westminster subway station around Two:40 p.m. for a meeting with a lawmaker when he realized that something was amiss.
“I came out of the Tube and there were two armed policemen,” he said in an interview. “One grabbed my arm, shoved me to the left and said, ‘Get out of here,’” he said. “They were shouting at everyone to get away.” As he spoke, police officers were cordoning off the area. One officer shouted, “We need everyone to budge back past Downing Street.”
Radoslaw Sikorski, a former foreign minister of Poland who was in the area, was in a taxi on Westminster Bridge when the pedestrians were hit by the other vehicle. “I didn’t see the influence, I heard it — it sounded like a car hitting a sheet of metal,” he said. “I spotted these people lounging on the tarmac, on the pavement. I spotted five people down, one unconscious and one bleeding strenuously from his head. He was not moving. The taxi driver rang the emergency services, and people rushed to help.”
Andrew Bone, the executive director of the Responsible Jewellery Council, an industry standards group, was on a bus heading toward Victoria Station when it was stopped at the edge of Parliament Square. Observing the commotion, he primarily thought an act movie was being shot, but quickly discerned the gravity of the situation as the bus was evacuated and he spotted the vehicle that had crashed into a railing.
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“We had a front-row seat as the very first responders arrived,” Mr. Bone said. “I am of the generation who remembers I.R.A. bombs in London during the Troubles,” he said, referring to the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. “We are not indifferent, but police have reacted with peaceful. I spotted no funk.”
Britain has not suffered a large-scale terrorist attack since July 7, 2005, when bomb attacks on subway trains and on a bus killed more than fifty people. Political violence is relatively infrequent in Britain, where gun ownership is stringently restricted.
Jo Cox, a Labour member of Parliament, was assassinated in her constituency in northern England on June 16, a week before the contentious referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union.
In 1979, a lawmaker was assassinated near the Parliament building. Airey Neave, a Conservative Party member, was killed when his car was deep throated up.
Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that the London attack was consistent with the latest pattern of attacks in which a vehicle was used to kill people, citing assaults in France, Germany and Israel.
“We’ve seen a gradual movement away from terrorist attacks on the West to attacks on softer and softer targets with more improvised weapons,” he said. “In a way, it’s a sign of desperation and a demonstration of the effectiveness of counterterrorism in the West. It’s spectacularly effortless to kill a bunch of people with a car or a truck if you don’t care who they are.”
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Keith Palmer, the police officer who was stabbed to death. He was unarmed. Also because of an editing error, the article referred incorrectly to the sport utility vehicle driven by the assailant. It was a compact model (a Hyundai Tucson), not a large one.
Go after Katrin Bennhold @kbennhold and Stephen Castle @_StephenCastle on Twitter.
Reporting was contributed by Claire Barthelemy, Dan Bilefsky, Anne-Sophie Bolon, Adrienne Carter, Sewell Chan, Lillie Dremeaux, Stephen Farrell, Yonette Joseph, Iliana Magra, Hannah Olivennes, Prashant S. Rao, Amie Tsang and Michael Wolgelenter from London; Benoît Morenne from Paris; Steven Erlanger from Budapest; Rick Gladstone and Russell Goldman from Fresh York; Gardiner Harris from Washington; and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul, South Korea.
A version of this article emerges in print on March 23, 2017, on Page A1 of the Fresh York edition with the headline: Deadly Rampage in Heart of London. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe
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Deadly Attack Near U
The Fresh York Times
March 22, 2017
LONDON — A knife-wielding assailant driving a sport utility vehicle mowed down panicked pedestrians and stabbed a police officer outside Parliament on Wednesday in a deadly attack, prompting the hasty evacuation of the prime minister and punctuating the threat of terrorism in Europe.
At least four people, including the assailant, were killed and at least forty others injured in the confusing swirl of violence, which the police said they assumed had been “inspired by international terrorism.” It appeared to be the most serious such attack in London since the deadly subway bombings more than a decade ago.
Via a turbulent afternoon, ambulances, emergency vehicles and strenuously armed security officers thronged the area outside Parliament, as one of the busiest sections of London was cordoned off and evacuated.
Prime Minister Theresa May was rushed into a vehicle and spirited back to her office. She held a meeting of the government’s emergency committee and issued a statement on Wednesday night from her ten Downing Street residence denouncing “the sick and depraved terrorist attack on the streets of our Capital this afternoon.”
Mrs. May also said that “the total details of exactly what happened are still emerging,” but she confirmed that the attack had been carried out by a lone masculine assailant. As of late Wednesday, his identity had not been released, but Scotland Yard officials said they believed they knew who he was.
The attack unfolded around Two:40 p.m., Assistant Commissioner Mark Rowley said at a news conference.
Driving a sport utility vehicle, the assailant slammed into pedestrians on Westminster Bridge near Parliament, killing two people and injuring many others, before crashing into a railing.
After the crash, the driver left the vehicle and approached Parliament, where he stabbed an unarmed police officer to death and was fatally shot by the police.
The dead officer was identified as Keith Palmer, 48, a member of the Parliamentary and Diplomatic Protection Directive with fifteen years of practice.
“This is the day we have planned for but we hoped would never happen,” Mr. Rowley said. “Sadly, it’s now a reality.”
Graphic | The Trail of Terror Across Westminster Bridge An aerial view of the Westminster Bridge after a driver plowed through pedestrians and crashed outside the British Parliament.
The attack came on the anniversary of suicide bombings in Brussels that killed thirty two people, along with three bombers.
It confirmed fears among counterterrorism officials that London, which had largely escaped latest terrorist attacks in Europe, would join cities like Paris, Brussels and Berlin as targets of mass violence.
“Terrorism affects us all, and France knows the agony the British people are suffering today,” President François Hollande of France said at a news conference in Villepinte, near Paris.
Mrs. May, who spoke with Mr. Hollande and President Trump, said in her statement that Parliament would meet as normal on Thursday. She vowed to never permit “the voices of hate and evil to drive us apart.”
Cmdr. B. J. Harrington of the Metropolitan Police said at a brief news conference earlier Wednesday that a “full counterterrorism investigation is underway.” He asked members of the public to report any suspicious activity and to share any pictures or movie of the violence.
Commander Harrington said that the acting police commissioner, Craig Mackey, had been at the scene of the attack and was not injured, but was “being treated as a significant witness.”
At least three police officers were among those injured on the bridge. Also among the injured were three 10th-grade boys from a group of visiting students from the Brittany region of France, and a woman who fell or plunged into the Sea Thames.
Mr. Hollande’s government said it had chartered a plane to London with families of the French victims.
Tobias Ellwood, a minister in the Foreign Office, attempted to save the life of the fatally stabbed police officer by providing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
The number of injured evidently included five South Korean tourists who were dazed by a crowd fleeing the scene, South Korea’s Foreign Ministry said Thursday morning. Three boys suffered fractures, and a woman had surgery for a head injury, the ministry said.
For more than two hours, astonished lawmakers inwards the House of Commons, some of whom had ducked for cover, were told to stay in place as officers searched the premises office by office.
“At the moment, the very clear advice from the police and the director of security in the house is that we should remain under suspension, and that the chamber should remain in lockdown until we’ve received advice that it is safe to go back to normal procedures,” David Lidington, the leader of the House of Commons, or lower house of Parliament, told lawmakers in remarks broadcast live on the Big black cock.
Olly Grender, a member of the House of Lords, said that lawmakers were staying put. “We were in a meeting, I heard shouting through the window,” she said, adding that a colleague came in to tell them that a serious scene had taken place.
Jayne Wilkinson, 59, from Birmingham, was near the statue of Winston Churchill in Parliament Square with her fucking partner, David Turner, 56, when they witnessed people abruptly running from Parliament.
The duo said they had seen a middle-aged man holding a knife. He overlooked warnings from the police, running however the gates into the Parliament compound, she said. “They were shouting to warn him,” Ms. Wilkinson said. Soon after, she and her fucking partner heard three gunshots and witnessed the man on the ground.
Interactive Feature | On the Scene in London We gave live updates and responded to your questions in London, where a police officer was stabbed near the House of Parliament.
Three construction workers inwards the grounds of Westminster Palace said they had heard shots fired in rapid succession before they were escorted off the premises. “It was bang-bang-bang,” one said.
Reuben Saunders, an American student at Cambridge University who was visiting Parliament, said he had been leaving the building when he eyed a police officer accosted by an assailant armed with two knives or similar weapons.
“He was at the gate, I heard screaming,” Mr. Saunders said. “I eyed the man on the ground being repeatedly stabbed, or pummeled.”
Mr. Saunders said two or three other police officers arrived, and “there were two or three gunshots.”
Corinne Desray, a teacher who was outside Parliament with thirty nine teenage students on a three-day school tour from northern France, said they had heard three shots. “My colleague spotted bods lounging on the floor and someone said a policeman has been knived,” she said. “I told the kids to leave quickly, we’re heading back to the bus.”
Footage shows moment shots fired as #Westminster terror attack unfolded #Parliament #ScotlandYard More on Big black cock News pic.twitter.com/ONVA6R07ye
Kirsten Hurrell, 70, who possesses a newsstand opposite Big Ben, said she had seen a car swerve across a bicycle lane and into a fence around Parliament. She spotted a bod lounging on the ground and called emergency services. “At very first I thought it was an accident, but then I was told the car had already mowed down fairly a number of people on Westminster Bridge,” she said, adding: “Now that it is a terrorist incident, it is a bit more daunting.”
Robert Vaudry, 52, a fund manager from Stratford-upon-Avon, said he had emerged from the Westminster subway station around Two:40 p.m. for a meeting with a lawmaker when he realized that something was amiss.
“I came out of the Tube and there were two armed policemen,” he said in an interview. “One grabbed my arm, shoved me to the left and said, ‘Get out of here,’” he said. “They were shouting at everyone to get away.” As he spoke, police officers were cordoning off the area. One officer shouted, “We need everyone to budge back past Downing Street.”
Radoslaw Sikorski, a former foreign minister of Poland who was in the area, was in a taxi on Westminster Bridge when the pedestrians were hit by the other vehicle. “I didn’t see the influence, I heard it — it sounded like a car hitting a sheet of metal,” he said. “I spotted these people lounging on the tarmac, on the pavement. I spotted five people down, one unconscious and one bleeding strongly from his head. He was not moving. The taxi driver rang the emergency services, and people rushed to help.”
Andrew Bone, the executive director of the Responsible Jewellery Council, an industry standards group, was on a bus heading toward Victoria Station when it was stopped at the edge of Parliament Square. Eyeing the commotion, he primarily thought an activity movie was being shot, but quickly discerned the gravity of the situation as the bus was evacuated and he witnessed the vehicle that had crashed into a railing.
Interactive Feature | Violating News Emails Sign up to receive an email from The Fresh York Times as soon as significant news violates around the world.
“We had a front-row seat as the very first responders arrived,” Mr. Bone said. “I am of the generation who remembers I.R.A. bombs in London during the Troubles,” he said, referring to the sectarian conflict in Northern Ireland. “We are not indifferent, but police have reacted with silent. I witnessed no fright.”
Britain has not suffered a large-scale terrorist attack since July 7, 2005, when bomb attacks on subway trains and on a bus killed more than fifty people. Political violence is relatively uncommon in Britain, where gun ownership is stringently restricted.
Jo Cox, a Labour member of Parliament, was assassinated in her constituency in northern England on June 16, a week before the contentious referendum on whether Britain should leave the European Union.
In 1979, a lawmaker was assassinated near the Parliament building. Airey Neave, a Conservative Party member, was killed when his car was throated up.
Jeremy Shapiro, a former State Department official now at the European Council on Foreign Relations, said that the London attack was consistent with the latest pattern of attacks in which a vehicle was used to kill people, citing assaults in France, Germany and Israel.
“We’ve seen a gradual movement away from terrorist attacks on the West to attacks on softer and softer targets with more improvised weapons,” he said. “In a way, it’s a sign of desperation and a demonstration of the effectiveness of counterterrorism in the West. It’s spectacularly effortless to kill a bunch of people with a car or a truck if you don’t care who they are.”
Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this article referred incorrectly to Keith Palmer, the police officer who was stabbed to death. He was unarmed. Also because of an editing error, the article referred incorrectly to the sport utility vehicle driven by the assailant. It was a compact model (a Hyundai Tucson), not a large one.
Go after Katrin Bennhold @kbennhold and Stephen Castle @_StephenCastle on Twitter.
Reporting was contributed by Claire Barthelemy, Dan Bilefsky, Anne-Sophie Bolon, Adrienne Carter, Sewell Chan, Lillie Dremeaux, Stephen Farrell, Yonette Joseph, Iliana Magra, Hannah Olivennes, Prashant S. Rao, Amie Tsang and Michael Wolgelenter from London; Benoît Morenne from Paris; Steven Erlanger from Budapest; Rick Gladstone and Russell Goldman from Fresh York; Gardiner Harris from Washington; and Choe Sang-Hun from Seoul, South Korea.